Conventionally, in the process of cutting small food dough having a given weight out of relatively long and large food dough, the food is transferred from a conveyor on an upstream side onto a conveyor on a downstream side, a weight of the food dough transferred to the conveyor on the downstream side is detected, and then the food dough is cut when the detected weight reaches the given weight. This technique has been disclosed in Patent Document 1, for example.
The conventional measuring and cutting method is effective when the food dough is continuously placed on the conveyor on the upstream side. However, if dusting flour or the like adheres to the conveyor on the downstream side, for example, then this method has a problem that a weight of the adhering dusting flour or the like may affect a measured value of the food dough.
On the other hand, in a manufacturing method for a sweet bun and the like, food dough (bread dough) divided into an appropriate amount is properly rounded into a ball by using a dough rounding apparatus before sending the dough to a subsequence process such as a leavening process. This technique has been disclosed in Patent Document 2, for example.
A configuration disclosed in the aforementioned Patent Document 2 is a configuration in which a rotating body with a frusto-conical shape is provided inside an outer cylinder with a cylindrical shape to be rotatable in one direction and eccentrically rotatable. Although a rounding action of the bread dough is effectively performed, this configuration requires a motor for rotating the rotating body and another motor for eccentrically rotating the rotating body. Hence this configuration is complicated and expensive, and there has been a demand for a rounding apparatus having a simpler configuration.